Fifty years after his death, Wells Coates is seen as a seminal figure in the modern movement in architecture in Britain. Born in Japan in December 1895, he studied engineering in Canada and in England and began practising as an architect in London in 1928. His blocks of flats, his shop and office designs, houses, interiors, radios, boats, and other industrial designs are evidence of his commitment to a functional aesthetic and of his refusal to compromise his own high standards.

This website is largely based on The Door to a Secret Room: A Portrait of Wells Coates, a book by Coates's daughter Laura Cohn (Scolar Press 1999).